UK DNA database errors raise concerns

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The largest DNA database in the world covering details on about 4.5 million
people including information on every person arrested, convicted or not, and
on 900 000 children raises questions as inaccuracies and administrative
errors have been found in its records.

Incorrect dates, spelling mistakes and duplications have been found by Data
Quality and Integrity Team of the DNA database unit. These mistakes can lead
to innocent people being accused of crimes and wrongly arrested. Information
added to incorrect profiles has also obliged the police to erase affected
records.

The DNA Database Unit had also admitted in a report in May 2007 that between
1995 and 2005 it failed to load 26 200 records to the DNA database because
of errors, which resulted in 183 undetected crimes.

In August 2007 statistics released by the Home Office were showing around
550 000 files with wrongly recorded or miss spelt names. This created big
concerns among civil rights groups. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of civil
rights group Liberty, considered it was already bad that the database
included innocent people which had never been charged, many children and a
large percentage of ethnic minorities. “Now it turns out we don’t know the
accuracy of the data. How many Postman Pats and Donald Ducks have entries on
a system worthy of the Keystone Cops?” she commented.

A spokesman from the National Policing Improvement Agency stated that most
of these errors have been corrected but admitted errors are still possible.
“Between January and November 1,450 demographic discrepancies have been
discovered and rectified. Some of these are spelling errors, date taken
amendments and Force code amendments (…) The Custodian Accreditation
Service has identified and logged 111 unexpected results – possible errors –
for the financial year 2006/07 that have resulted in the deletion of a
profile or an amendment to the profile.”

John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP for Birmingham Yardley and an Internet
entrepreneur who is investigating the reasons of the occurrence of so many
errors stated: “It is important that people recognise Government databases
are not necessarily 100 per cent accurate (…) It is quite clear you can’t
trust the Government with your personal information. They need to massively
tighten up the way they deal with these issues.”

Innocents fear DNA database errors (26.11.2007)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/26/ndna126.xml

Outrage at 500,000 DNA database mistakes (27.08.2007)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/27/ndna127.xml

EDRI-gram : UK Home Office plans to fingerprint children starting 11
(14.03.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.5/uk-fingerprint-children